From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



personification then sometimes acquires truly remarkable 

 power, and deserves the closest attention. 



What is the origin and nature of these mediumistic 

 personalities ? In ordinary disjunctions, the secondary 

 personalities which appear as a consequence of mental 

 decentralisation behave as usurpers of the place of the 

 Self. They seem to aim at replacing the legitimate 

 government; they declare themselves to be the true 

 Self. In mediumship, their behaviour is different they 

 declare themselves foreign to the Self; they claim to 

 be distinct entities. Usually, at least in our day and 

 in the west, they claim to be the * spirits ' of the dead, 

 and say that they only borrow from the medium the 

 vital dynamism and organic elements which they need 

 in order to act upon the material plane. 



The proofs given by them in support of their state- 

 ments are generally vague and will not bear examination; 

 but sometimes they are singularly clear; they recall 

 the personality of the deceased, they give minute and 

 unknown personal details, his native language, his 

 features (in teleplastic cases), his- signature, etc. 



What are we to think of these affirmations ? Are 

 they always false ? Is mediumship but the domain of 

 deceit and illusion? Many students of psychism do not 

 hesitate to say so. Let us reproduce some of their 

 arguments. They say: 



* Mediumistic personalities may well, in spite 

 of their affirmations, be only secondary personalities, 

 their genesis being analogous to these latter. As they 

 start from a suggestion or an auto-suggestion, whether 

 conscious or subconscious, their development and 

 their acquirements would be under the same 

 mechanism. 



' None of the proofs of autonomy and indepen- 

 dence can be formal. The psychological differences 

 in faculties and knowledge from those of the 



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